Warning: This post deals with miscarriage and might be triggering for some readers.

Not all heroes wear capes; in Chrissy Teigen’s case, it’s very often a glamorous dressing gown.

It’s her signature look: at home, hair tossed up in a bun, wearing a robe loosely tied at the waist, showing a bit of boob.

She looks amazing, but if you look deeper, her pictorial choices mean something more.

Any photo of the 35-year-old dressed like this and posted to her Insta is a metaphor for what she represents: a mother, honest and raw.

It makes her relatable as much as an immaculately curated, Kardashian-esque feed, doesn’t.

Chrissy uses no filters. Usually wears no make-up. Is not afraid of showing an unmade bed, or a kitchen bench scattered with stuff.

But what really sets Chrissy apart from other people with millions of followers is she isn’t real just visually; she also isn’t shy of speaking up. She’s always been a truth-sayer about politics, and her marriage to John Legend, and the reality of motherhood. She’s talked about stretch marks, her ‘mom bod’, and postpartum depression.

This year, the mum-of-three has been especially open about how she’s feeling on two ‘controversial’ topics; and no, I don’t mean her outspoken dislike of Donald Trump. I mean formula feeding and baby loss.

Normally taboo topics in the public space, Chrissy has opened these conversations, and made it ok for all of us to have feelings in public again.

In October, Chrissy wrote about the loss of her baby, Jack, brother to Luna, four, and Miles, two. Posting photos of her heart-breaking experience in hospital, as it happened, Chrissy wrote:

“We are shocked and in the kind of deep pain you only hear about, the kind of pain we’ve never felt before. We were never able to stop the bleeding and give our baby the fluids he needed, despite bags and bags of blood transfusions. It just wasn’t enough.

“To our Jack - I’m so sorry that the first few moments of your life were met with so many complications, that we couldn’t give you the home you needed to survive. We will always love you.

“On this darkest of days, we will grieve, we will cry our eyes out. But we will hug and love each other harder and get through it.”

The response was swift, immense, and overwhelmingly supportive. Chrissy was applauded by many for her bravery in sharing her story, which made women who’d had the same experience but felt they needed to keep it a secret, believing it was a personal shame – seen.

And if they felt seen, they could speak up about what happened to them, and openly get the help they needed.

As Meghan Markle said in her November essay in The New York Times about her July miscarriage, “When one person speaks the truth, it gives license for all of us to do the same…In being invited to share our pain, together we take the first steps toward healing.”